by Martina Cole
She was so glad she had listened to the woman, it had helped to get it all off her chest to someone she knew she would never see again once this was over. Miriam was kind and helpful, but not exactly someone one would choose as a friend in normal circumstances. But there was nothing normal about any of this and, as the old saying went, any port in a storm. That sentiment seemed very apt at this moment in time.
Sitting on her daughter’s chaise longue, Mariska Compton finally cried. Not for herself this time, but for her daughter and the tragic loss of such a young life. If she had only given her a bit more of her time, none of this might have happened.
Kate and Annie were back on track and they were both glad. Kate was throwing herself into work; knowing about Patrick and that girl had all but destroyed her, but she was a realist. She knew that it was going to hurt, and hurt for a long time. Her best defence was to be as busy as possible and, with all that was going on, she could easily achieve that much.
Also, seeing the devastation of the girls put her own problems into a much-needed perspective. She knew through Jennifer that Patrick had sorted his troubles in his own inimitable way and she was genuinely glad about that. But the pain was still there, aching inside her whenever she allowed herself to think too much about it.
Kate looked at Annie and smiled wanly. ‘Did you get the other girls’ names together?’
Annie nodded. Kate noticed she looked as harassed as she herself did and that, she felt, was a good sign. She never trusted police who could leave the job behind when they went home. It was a job that needed twenty-four-seven interest, and twenty-four-seven time and effort.
‘Quite a few more. Jennifer has been very forthcoming.’
‘Where are they? Are they coming here or do we visit them?’
‘Both. Most of them are happy to see us here, a few insist on seeing us on neutral ground.’
Kate nodded. ‘We’ll take some ourselves and give the others to a good WPC. That new young one, what’s her name? Amanda?’
Annie smiled. ‘Yeah. Mandy Tooley. She’s good with the working girls. I’ll get her on to it. I thought we could do the others either alphabetically or by location. You decide.’
Kate shrugged. ‘You decide, it’s your call.’
Annie was inordinately pleased that Kate was deferring to her. She knew it was petty, but somehow it made her feel as though she really was the one who was actually orchestrating everything. She knew it wasn’t true, and so did Kate, but it had gone a long way to getting them back on an even keel.
‘In that case, I thought we could go alphabetically, cross them off our list and move on.’
Kate nodded. Personally she would have mapped out the addresses and therefore prevented them both from crossing town over and over again. But she didn’t say that. Instead she smiled happily and picked up her handbag.
Janette Carter was tall, very tall, with a boyish body and thick, silky hair. She was wearing coloured contacts so her eyes were a very bright green, her teeth were white, and just perfect enough to give her a lovely smile. Kate liked her on sight; she had a warmth that was endearing.
‘How often did you work out of the flats?’
Janette raised her heavily made-up eyes to the ceiling, she seemed to be genuinely trying to answer the question honestly. ‘I worked out of them all at one time or another, not that I can be that specific about dates. Now, young Sandy, God bless her, she kept a notebook and she wrote everything in it. Names, dates, amounts. She was quite a clever girl in that respect, very well educated, you know.’
Kate nodded, startled by this bit of information. They had found nothing in the room Sandy worked out of, nor in her flat. It had to have been taken. Her credit cards, money, all her personal jewellery were still in situ. But this notebook, if it existed, had not been catalogued.
‘What kind of notebook?’
Annie’s mind was clearly going along the same lines as Kate’s.
‘A little black one.’ Janette laughed. ‘A little black book. One of them Moleskine ones they sell in Paperchase. I remember because she gave me one too once. I admired hers and the next time I saw her she had bought one for me. I was really touched because they ain’t cheap, the bit of paper inside said it was used by Ernest Hemingway.’
She laughed good-naturedly once more. ‘Not that he had used that one, if you see what I mean. Really nice paper. I know that sounds silly, but it was something I would never have thought to purchase for myself. It was a reporter’s notebook, had a lovely elastic band that kept it shut and stopped the pages from curling up. There’s even a little envelope in the back for notes and things. It’s the only notebook I would use now, very luxurious and handy.’
‘And she always had it with her?’
Kate’s voice was low and inquisitive. Janette turned to face her and said honestly, ‘We all used to take the piss, but she said that one day it would make her her fortune. I assumed she was writing client names and car numbers in there, that kind of thing. The dates they visited her too, she had quite a regular clientele. She was known to be a bit over the road, if you see what I mean. Not that I want to say anything bad about her, but she was known to do things other girls wouldn’t.’
Kate nodded again, this time as a conspirator. ‘Did you ever see this notebook? I mean anything she had written down in there?’
Janette’s eyes once more perused the ceiling in earnest. ‘No. Nothing important anyway. Just numbers and amounts.’
‘Do you all get to see the same men at times?’
‘Oh yeah. Most of them don’t care who they get, but if they request one of us personally, we tend to up the charge like. It’s a perk of the trade. I would have a drink with Sandy now and again at the casino. The girl who used to run it was great with us, she never minded us working the tables for a few extra quid. She was Danny Foster’s sister, so she had her creds like. The punters weren’t averse either. But Eve Foster would know more, I think she had some kind of working relationship with Sandy. She was a fucker for making herself busy. Chasing the dollar, if you get my drift.’
Kate felt her heart stop in her chest. If Danny was being brought into this, then so would Patrick, and that meant, at some point, so would she. Pat might have swerved the owning of the properties, after all, that was a legal business transaction and he could easily argue the case of the sleeping partner. But if any of the other girls frequented the casino then he would have a problem explaining that away as a coincidence. It gave them something called association. He was now associated both with the houses and the females who worked from his premises.
But Kate knew, better than anyone, how a coincidence could get you hung, drawn and quartered by the British judicial system. People had been put away for a lot less, and for very serious amounts of time. Plus, where the fuck would all this leave her? She might be retired, but she still had a reputation to uphold, and without Pat in her life she had nothing but her part-time work. Without that, she knew she would never survive.
Annie was thinking along the same lines, only she was ashamed at the tiny jolt of pleasure she had garnered from this girl’s thoughtless honesty. Annie had the grace to admit her failings and push them to the back of her very overcrowded mind. She was still harbouring a jealousy that was not only immature, childish even but, worse than that, she was also aware that without Kate and her experience they would never find this fucker in a million years.
Janette sensed the tension in the room and wondered if she had said something wrong. ‘Look, Danny and his sister have nothing to do with all this, I was just trying to explain a point.’
It suddenly occurred to Janette that she might just have inadvertently put herself in grave danger, the Fosters were not a team to cross. Especially Eve. She could be a hard cow where the girls were concerned and Janette didn’t fancy having her on her back because she had been loose-lipped.
Chapter Thirteen
Margaret Dole was waiting for Kate outside, in the car park. It was just getting da
rk, and a chill had settled in the air. It was one of those nights when the weather was finally letting up, and the rain was easing off for a while. Kate hoped it would keep up, she hated the bitter cold, especially when she had to work all hours. It could become depressing.
Kate inwardly sighed when she saw her, but forced a smile and said gaily, ‘All right, Margaret, what can I do for you?’
Margaret gave a small grin showing slightly yellowing teeth. Like a lot of the force, she chain-smoked, it was part of the job and the no-smoking law would never change that. It had just turned the police station grounds into one large fucking ash-tray.
‘It’s more what I can do for you, actually.’
Kate was intrigued. ‘So? Tell me.’
She settled herself against her car and waited patiently. Instinct told her this was going to be something interesting. Margaret was a lot of things, but she wasn’t a fool, not by anyone’s standards.
‘Let’s go somewhere and grab a coffee, shall we? Only, what I want to talk to you about is best said away from prying eyes.’
Kate was even more intrigued by Margaret’s words and her tone. Smiling archly, she answered her quietly, ‘This sounds more like we need a drink, a real one. Any preferences?’
Patrick was not a happy camper. He missed Kate. That was the crux of his problem. He was out and about like a geriatric clubber, and it was starting to wear a bit thin. In fact, it was getting on his fucking nerves; the same faces, the same smells, the same old war stories he had heard a hundred times before. His liver was on the verge of packing its cases and going on holiday for a well-earned rest, and he had a rash on his old boy that was driving him to distraction. The doctor had told him he was suffering from a fungal infection and given him some cream. He was relieved that he had not caught something suspicious, and felt badly that he had assumed Eve had given him a round of applause, the clap. Pat had known in his heart that Eve had not been the culprit, but it was only now that he knew it was because of his new-found penchant for tight Speedo-type underwear that he was finally calm enough to see things rationally. But it was embarrasing in an old man like him.
Mainly though, as a realist, he had to tell himself the truth, no matter how painful. He wanted Kate back. He wanted the body that he had grown to know so well, the conversation that he enjoyed, her argumentativeness when challenged. He now appreciated that her need for a job had actually given him plenty of time to play golf and listen to his music. Pat missed the meals Kate cooked too, the glass of wine together at the end of the day, he missed the companionship. For all his annoyance that they didn’t travel more, do more together, at this particular moment in time, he would accept her back on any terms.
So what the fuck was he going to do about Eve? Who, in fairness, also had her charms. He didn’t want to hurt her, and he knew the situation with Danny could get a bit fraught, what with her being his sister and all, not that he really gave a monumental fuck about that. But he respected the boy, even more so now he had seen fit to sort out the O’Learys.
Pat was itching again, and he went into one of the downstairs bathrooms to apply more cream. The incongruousness of the situation hit him: he was well past retirement age, he had a rash on his dangler, and he was dreading the arrival of his young lady friend. It was time he took serious stock and sorted this whole fucking sorry mess out. What he needed, he decided, was to get his Kate back and get his old life back. He missed it, missed the normality, the knowledge that, even though he was getting older, it didn’t matter so much when they were together. At the end of the day, Kate wasn’t a spring chicken herself. His brush with a second youth was over, he had never particularly liked the first one. Now he had made his mind up, he felt easier. All he had to do was get a plan and put it into action. He opened the whisky and poured himself a drink.
First on the agenda, though, was getting shot of Eve. Something he felt was going to be easier said than done.
Chief Superintendent Lionel Dart was almost beside himself with glee. He had, at last, found something on Kate Burrows, or Patrick Kelly’s tart, whatever you wanted to call her.
That he had to kowtow to Patrick was neither here nor there, he expected that, it went with the job. No self-respecting Chief Super would be anywhere in this world without the helping hand of the local bully boys. It was how the world worked. It was about scratching backs, making a decent wage, and ensuring the proper villains went to prison.
While Patrick had been trumping Kate, Lionel had been forced to stay his hand in the interests of keeping him happy. Something that most people seemed to realise was important very early on in their acquaintance with Pat.
But Kate, now she was another story. Lionel was honest enough to admit that it was her attitude to him that really rankled. Considering she was living with the man, how she could disapprove of his relationship with Patrick was beyond his comprehension. So what if he allowed himself a few perks? It wasn’t entirely unheard of, he liked the finer things in life. He also liked the association, for the more obvious reasons. It held a certain cachet, while allowing him certain freedoms he might not otherwise have been party to.
Lionel was a petty man by nature. He was also a disappointed man, he knew he had sold out too early in his career and that was why he was finishing his days in a shithole like Grantley. He had thrown in his all and, like many before him, he had found out too late that personal fulfilment was the real deal. His life was all but wasted, and there was nothing he could do to change anything now. He had made his fucking bed, and the last thing he wanted to do was lie in it, especially with the woman he had married all those years ago. She made statements that would have raised the blood pressure of a deaf mute.
But now he was looking forward to putting Kate Burrows firmly in her place and although it was childish and petty, he didn’t care. This, he felt, had been a long time coming.
Jemimah Dawes had always been a reckless individual, but the death of her friends had made her understand just how dangerous the life she was living actually was. Thanks to Miriam, she was seeing that there was a different path, a different way of life, that might not be so lucrative, but was definitely safer. Unencumbered with children, and without any real close family, she felt she had a good chance of making a fresh start.
In fact, thanks to Miriam and her contribution from her church fund, she was getting herself ready to make the change. Seven hundred quid wasn’t exactly a fortune in these troubled times but, together with the money she had saved, it would help her afford a new start in any place she felt attracted to. Spain was one option. She could do bar work, or even, she smiled to herself, go back to her usual occupation, only this time without the added burden of a fucking twenty-four-carat nut-case on the horizon.
She had been the victim of a right strange cove herself, and a part of her wondered if he was the man responsible for the other girls’ deaths. She knew he had been around for a long while, and that more than a few of the girls refused to deal with him. Unfortunately, there were always the girls who were willing to take the risk. It was because they felt that they deserved what they got, not that they would admit that, of course, but she had worked that one out a long time ago. Most of the girls in the game felt they were worthless, it happened to them gradually, over time.
She really wanted to change, she did. She just didn’t see how she was supposed to survive on a tenth of her weekly earn. She liked clothes, having a nice place to live, and she liked the safety net that money gave her. She liked her current address, it had a proper intercom and it was quite smart. She had never made the mistake of entertaining at home, her neighbours all thought she worked as a croupier.
But Jemimah was genuinely nervous these days, and a new start was just what she needed. She had also upset a few of her so-called friends by omitting to tell them of calls they had received, then taking the client herself. So she knew she was living on borrowed time as far as the other girls were concerned, and she felt it would soon be necessary to vacate the town o
f Grantley and spread her charms in a different location entirely.
She had one last punter, a regular, the first and only one she would ever entertain in her own home, then Miriam was coming around to give her a speech and, hopefully, the dough she had promised. She would look at flights later on. There was no hurry.
Eve was getting ready for her date with Patrick. She was pleased with her choice of dress, it was a fitted black silk number that clung where it touched, yet didn’t reveal anything you wouldn’t want your nan to see. She knew it was sex on legs, and the black, strappy high heels gave it a definite thumbs up.
Patrick was a man she liked enormously, that he was older than her didn’t bother her too much. He talked well, though he was a bit dated in his opinions at times, but then that was to be expected. He was also a man who could do wonders for her and her career. She wasn’t averse to the fact that an association with Patrick Kelly was opening all sorts of doors for her.
Pat was a clever and thoughtful man and she knew that he realised that she genuinely cared for him and liked his company. She was also aware that she was a bit of a feather in his cap. There were not many men out there who would turn her down. She should know, she had turned down enough in her time. He also liked that she understood him and his businesses. Reading between the lines, Eve felt that Kate had been kept in the dark about a lot of his interests.
She applied another layer of red lip gloss; this dress needed the vamp look: red lips and eyes heavy with mascara. Luckily, it was a look that suited her. She had swept her hair up in a neat chignon and placed diamond studs in her prettily shaped ears.